Identical Twins Dead In Murder-Suicide After A Year-Long Dispute

A long-standing feud between two identical twins has apparently ended with a murder-suicide. According to People, the 39-year-old brothers had been fighting for some time. “The two brothers have been fighting for about a year,” Carter County Sheriff Neil Kittelmann said.

On Oct 19, Travis Carlson was shot and killed while working as a fence builder on Tie Creek Road in Carter County, Montana. Two employees working with the victim says that they witnessed a confrontation between Travis and his twin brother, Eric (pictured above). The employees did not witness the actual shooting “but [saw] the tail end of it,” Kittelmann says. “They just went to the house and got the landowners and they called me.”

Authorities were sent out to find Eric. He was discovered dead in his home the next morning, from what appeared to be a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Investigators believe that he shot himself after killing Travis Carlson.

The police aren't sure what exactly would set Eric off to kill Travis. "We don’t know a reason for why that stuff happens. You don’t know that and I don’t know that,” said the sheriff. The sheriff thinks their feud was family related.

Travis Carlson owned and operated Carlson Custom Fencing, per The Ekalaka Eagle, Eric Carlson owned land in the county. The men were originally from Canton, South Dakota.

An autopsy was completed last Monday in the incidents. As of last week, The Fallon County Times shares that Montana Department of Justice’s Division of Criminal Investigation (DCI) is in charge of an ongoing investigation. The small town of Ekalaka is still recovering in the aftermath of the shooting.